Register of Geographic Codes: Definitive UK Statistical Geographies (December 2017)

ONS maintains the definitive list of UK statistical geographies, coordinating new codes and maintaining relationships between active and archived code ranges. This December 2017 version includes updates for County Electoral Divisions, Electoral Wards, Clinical Commissioning Groups, and Waste Authorities in England. The data is a key product for the Government Statistical Service and should be used with the separate Code History Database.

Use Cases

• Standardizing location-based data analysis based on the definitive list of UK statistical geographies.
• Mapping administrative boundaries for England based on updated entities like County Electoral Divisions (E58).
• Joining socio-economic datasets using consistent geographic codes maintained by ONS.
• Tracking changes in electoral or health service boundaries based on updates to Wards (E05) and Clinical Commissioning Groups (E38).

Strengths

• Maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as the definitive set for the UK.
• Includes specific updates for December 2017, such as a new entity for County Electoral Divisions (E58).
• Designed for use with a separate Code History Database to track code relationships over time.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is from December 2017; freshness should be verified for current applications.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Maintained and coordinated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on behalf of the Government Statistical Service.

Time Range

December 2017

Freshness

Last updated 2025-08-11 07:50:27; data snapshot is from December 2017.

Geography

United Kingdom